How To Identify & Monitor Your High Risk Customers
Learn to identify and monitor high-risk customers in line with FFIEC, FinCEN and CDD/EDD expectations, avoid common mistakes and run reviews that hold up with examiners.
Speaker
Thomas Nollner
Former national bank examiner · Office of Technical Assistance, U.S. Treasury · 30 years as OCC bank examiner
Overview
High-risk customer reviews have been required since the first FFIEC Examination Manual was published in 2005, and customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence (CDD/EDD) guidance further defines how institutions should identify and evaluate high-risk customers. What regulators don't spell out is the day-to-day approach to monitoring.
This 60-minute webinar on identifying and monitoring high-risk customers fills that gap. It reviews FinCEN, FATF and other regulatory requirements, FFIEC guidelines for determining high-risk customers, and FinCEN's expectations for a good program.
You'll learn what to include in your high-risk program, three common identification mistakes, how to make sure new and existing high-risk customers are identified, and how enforcement actions have targeted weak programs.
Why attend: This session gives practical steps for meeting both the letter and the spirit of the rules on high-risk customers. Drawing on real-world audit issues, it shows what many institutions get wrong, what to do instead, and how to avoid examiner criticism. It suits account opening staff, risk managers, BSA/AML and compliance officers, and BSA/AML audit staff.
What’s covered
- Why institutions need information about high-risk customers
- FinCEN, FATF and other regulatory requirements
- FFIEC guidelines for determining high-risk customers
- FinCEN expectations for a good high-risk customer program
- What to include in your high-risk program
- Three common mistakes in identifying high-risk customers
- Current issues in the high-risk process
- Enforcement actions addressing weak high-risk programs
- Real-life examples of high-risk customer reviews
Who should attend
What you get
About the speaker
Thomas E Nollner has more than 35 years of experience in financial institution supervision and consulting. Mr. Nollner spent 30 years as a National Bank Examiner for the Comptroller of the Currency where he was a safety and soundness examiner and a compliance examiner. As a safety and soundness examiner he examined national banks for capital adequacy, asset quality, management issues, earnings concerns, and liquidity funding. As a compliance examiner, he examined national banks for compliance with consumer laws and regulations such as the Truth-in-Lending Act, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, the Flood Disaster Protection Act, the Community Reinvestment Act, and AML/CFT laws and regulations. His specialty was as an AML/CFT examiner, where he analyzed a bank’s AML/CFT program to ensure that it complied with applicable banking laws, rules, and regulations; he reviewed the bank’s suspicious transactions identification, monitoring, and reporting process; he traced proceeds and transactions through several layers of activity; and, he reviewed a bank’s processes and procedures to determine root causes of AML/CFT program weaknesses. Mr. Nollner currently works as a consultant for the Office of Technical Assistance (OTA), a branch of the U.S. Treasury that assists developing countries with banking issues. Mr. Nollner is assigned to the Economic Crimes Team that focused on training, assisting, and mentoring the staffs of the financial regulatory departments and financial intelligence units of various countries regarding AML/CFT compliance. In this capacity, he worked in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Viet Nam, Honduras, Guatemala, Guyana, Suriname, and Argentina developing AML/CFT examination procedures, providing AML/CFT training and mentoring, and updating local AML/CFT laws and regulations.

